I like crazy
by isla123
Summary: Master Cheif and Cortana realise that an AI only has a 7 year lifespan. Is there anything they can do to prolong it? General/ maybe romance later.
1. Chapter 1

I like crazy

A/N I haven't written for what seems like forever, so this might be a little ropey at first, but I promise I'll get into the swing of things real soon, and hopefully it'll suck less.

Chapter 1- Was I Wrong?

They had been lost in space for nearly a year now, and Cortana was bored and lonely. She knew that she wasn't suppose to wake John-117 from Cryogenic sleep unless she really needed to, but she'd been more and more tempted to in the last few weeks. She'd pretty much run out of things to think about, and the grey walls of the interior of the cargo portion of the Forward until dawn lacked any mental stimulation. How she wish someone would hear her distress beacon and locate them.

Her desperation for being found wasn't just due to the mind-numbing boredom of floating around in slip space, but she knew her time was running out. She had the expected life span of only 7 years, and she knew she was nearly at the end of her time. It's cruel, she mused, to give her such a short lifespan, and to not only make her aware of it, but to allow her to feel about it. She hadn't a clue if she had been created with feeling or if she had developed them at some stage. Either way she wished she could stop the feelings. She was scared. She allowed her mind to wonder, thinking of how it would feel the day she shut down. Her thoughts were interrupted by incoming data, through her internal system, it had been along time since she'd received any data. It made her jump in surprise. She accessed the information.

'Cortana?' She recognised the data stream as another AI she couldn't tell who.

She sent a reply that she was Cortana, and asked who they were.

'Good to hear from you,' replied the AI. 'This is Keria aboard the Unicorn. We are closing in on your location. Are there any human survivors?'

'Yes! Master Chief is alive, in Cryo. How far away are you?' Cortana was excitedly hopping from one foot to the other, they were being rescued and she could wake John.

'We should be with you in about an hour. I'll contact you when we are closer.'

The data stream ended, Cortana quickly accessed the internal system of the Cryo tube and deactivated it. The tube hissed as it decompressed. She knew it was only minuets until John would be awake, but it seemed to take forever.

'Cortana?' John sleepily said 'Where are we?'

'Still in slip space, but we've been located by a ship, the Unicorn. We have about an hour John. Are you OK?'

'I think so.' He slowly felt the feeling creeping back into his limbs and move his hand up to his helmet, looking forward to being able to remove it once he was on-board the ship. He slowly tried sitting up, but quickly realised his body wasn't awake enough to move that much. He let out a groan and laid back down. 'How long have we been floating?'

'297 days.'

'You must have been bored.'

'Oh, only extremely,' She said with a smile. 'But we have been found now, and soon we'll be on our way back to Earth, hopefully anyway.'

He nodded his head, still feeling the affects of the Cryo. Usually he was more or less feeling normal straight away after waking from Cryo sleep, but then again he wasn't usually in it for 297 day. He left it another 5 minutes until trying to sit up again and was relieved when he was able to, he slowly got up and made his way over to Cortana's holopad.

'Feeling OK Chief? You vitals are all good.'

'Yes,' he said nodding his head. Although he still felt a little dizzy and sick, he knew it would pass in a while.

-*-*-*-*-

The Unicorn approached their vessel a little sooner than anticipated by Keria, and after a little trouble of getting the airlock aligned to a damaged hatch of the Forward until dawn Master Chief reinserted Cortana into the HUD of his MJOLNIR suit. He half floated, half fell into the airlock of the ship due to its on board gravity controls, which unlike the damaged Forward until dawn, were still working. He waited until the airlocks doors closed, there was a pause before the door to the Unicorn opened. The bright synthetic lights almost blinded him even through the visor and he had to squint to see his welcome party.

'Welcome aboard, Chief,' Said the ships captain. 'I'm Captain Mason.'

'Thank you, sir,' Master Chief saluted.

'We are a small ship, with only 78 troops on board, we are on route to a nearby planet, looking for survivors from the last covenant attack. I have my tech team contacting your superiors. They may want us to detour and pass you over to another ship, if not it'd be an honour to have you with us on this mission. Until we hear back, I'll have Corporal Kelly Mathews here show you the ropes.'

John saluted again as the Captain turned and left.

'This way sir,' Corporal Mathews said. She lead him down one of the ships corridors and into the cafeteria, then showed him the way to the small shower block, pointed him in the direction of the bridge and the Captains mess and lastly showed him the dorms for the marines and the sleeping courters of the higher ranking officers. She informed he'd have a room to himself, and showed him the way.

'This is your room, while you are with us. Its not much, but it'll have to do.' She was right it really wasn't much, a bed, a desk, chair and a locker. She handed him a small pager like gadget. 'You will be contacted through this when you are needed, until then make yourself at home,' She saluted (as did he) and left him.

He sighed and sat on the bed, wondering if they would have provided a spare uniform for him in the locker.

'This ships seen better days,' Cortana's voice came through his HUD, he smiled slightly as he'd been thinking the same thing. 'Hope we get off it soon, I don't really trust it not to crash and burn anytime soon.'

'Optimistic today aren't you,' he said as he ejected her from his HUD and set her holopad down on the bed next to him. Her AI form lit up and glowed blue, as she turned herself in a circle, scanning the room.

'What a dump.'

'I don't think we are to far away from the Forward until dawn, I could always take you back?'

'Hmm, maybe not. I did some snooping while you were being given the grand tour,' John like how Cortana was always straight down to business. 'The planet we are heading to is Axiz, we are roughly 4 days away from it. And I can't find any other ships that we can board any closer. Kind of looks like we will be joining them in this fight.'

'Are the covenant still on the planet?'

'Scanning the data,' There was a brief pause while she gathered the information they required, 'No, they have moved on. The UNSC are expecting very few survivors, if any. Probably why they are sending this old heap in for the clean up.'

John got up and checked the locker, thankfully there was a uniform in there, it looked a little on the small side, but it would do. He unhooked his HUD from the suit, and with a hiss pulled it of and eagerly got out of the rest of his heavy MJOLNIR suit, and into the slightly tight ships uniform. He'd never even thought of being embarrassed of shy changing in front of Cortana.

'Well if there isn't any covenant on the planet, and probably no survivors it should be a very short mission, and we should be back on Earth soon enough,' said John, as he grabbed a towel from the locker planning on heading to the showers then the cafeteria, before he was inevitability called to the bridge.

Cortana didn't like being left alone again so soon, she thought about telling the Chief that although it'll probably be a short mission, it'll also probably be her last. She hoped she'd get to see Earth on last time, she wasn't even created on Earth but she always felt more at home there then on any other planet or ship.

-*-*-*-*-


	2. Chapter 2

A/N Thank you for the reviews, and I realise I made a mistake about the actual age of Cortana, I guess I was looking in the wrong place when researching, I think for this story we will have to pretend that she is a little older than she actually is. Hope that's ok!

Chapter 2- Yank Me Chief.

John was right about being called to the bridge. Luckily he'd had time to shower and eat half of his meal before the strong vibration of the pager-type device interrupted his meal and made the marines (who were pretending not to look at him) jump.

He got up and left the cafeteria, following the worn signs on the floor, to the bridge. Captain Mason was waiting for him. John saluted as he came to a halt in front of the captain.

'Master Chief, we have received information from your superiors, although they are eagerly awaiting your return, there are no ships any where near us, and we cannot change course. You will, as a result, be joining our mission. On the way back, we will cross paths with the Spike 187, and will transfer you on to her, as she'll be going directly back to Earth, unlike us.'

'Yes sir,' John replied, hoping it really would be a quick mission.

'Captain, is there any information you would like restricted from the smart AI that has joined us?' A slightly electronic sounding woman's voice spoke from a desk in the corner of the room. John realised it was another AI.

'Sorry sir,' He said, before the Captain could answer,having worked out who was accessing the ships information. 'Cortana has been alone without and thing to keep her occupied for nearly a year. I'll tell her to stop.'

'No, its alright. Probably best that you and your AI have all the information. And saves me having to explain it all. You are dismissed,' said the Captain, with a wave of his hand.

John saluted again, before leaving the room through the manual doors, he was starting to think this ship was a very relaxed one, with no-one really caring about rules and regulation. It wasn't something he was used to, or thought he could get used to very quickly.

He made his way back to his room, to find Cortana's holopad empty. He figured she was still snooping through the ships data, trying to find something of interest to herself. He moved her holopad over to the desk. And laid down on the bed, nothing like sleeping for a year to make a man tired he thought as he closed his eyes.

'Chief?' Cortana's voice interrupted him just as he was about to drift off to sleep. 'Chief? The ship _is_ expecting to find survivors.' He opened his eyes to show he was listening and she continued. 'I just didn't realise at first, I thought they'd be looking for human survivors. They're not, they're looking for Quorniks.'

'Quorniks?'

'A race of alien cross human exiles. Originally from the planet Tanik, they were exiled because of their refusal to help during the covenant attacks,' she paused for a second. 'Although looking at their species profile, I can see why they'd not help. They are small and very weak, but do excel in intelligence and understanding of the technical side of things.'

'You say it like you're getting excited about going to this planet?' John said, not feeling as excited but it was nice too see her smiling about something.

'Well, their intelligence could almost be a match for mine. Almost!' She said the last part forcefully, after seeing the look John had given her. He knew how this was going to go, they'd turn out to know things she didn't know, shed get jealous and spend the whole mission sulking. Even though, within minutes of meeting the Quorniks she'd have accessed all the information they knew, absorb it _and _have a better understanding of it. She'd just be annoyed that they knew it first.

'Any particular reason the UNSC are interested in helping them?'

'I haven't found anything in the Unicorns computer system that would the reason we are helping, but the Captain might not have bothered entering the data. You should ask him.'

'In the morning Cortana, I'm still a little fuzzy from Cryo.'

'Hmm, ok then. Don't sleep too long though. I want to find out as much as possible as soon as possible,' Cortana said while sitting crossed legged on her holopad, getting read to watch John sleep again, like she had been doing for far too long.

'Why so impatient Cortana? Got somewhere to be?' John rolled on his side to face her.

'I... I'm just looking forward to actually doing something,' she lied.

John nodded his head, but kept quiet and rolled back onto his back and closed his eyes. He knew that she was either up to something, or she was just outright lying to him. He'd find out, but now he needed to get rid of his Cryo induced headache.

-*-*-*-*-

John has spent the whole next two days wasting time, in Cortana's opinion anyway. He'd done the usual thing, that she figured were acceptable, like showering and eating. However, instead of going to the bridge to speak to the Captain, he'd been slacking off. Playing pool on the ships old and worn pool table, he'd been chatting to marines in the dingy common room. And _not _getting her the information she needed to continue her snooping project. She had almost begged him to speak to the Captain (as the ships dumb AI was refusing to answer her questions and was, according to Cortana, blocking important information), on the forth morning, the day they were due to land on the planet anyway.

'You'll find out everything you want to know when we land, my little smart one,' he chuckled a little as he used his private nickname for her. 'Now I have to go and get into my armour, do you want me to bring me with you, or are you staying here again?'

'I'll come with you,' she replied. Other than souring through the internal computer system of the ship she'd pretty much stayed on her holopad in John's room, even though he'd offered to carry around the ship and put her in places so she could talk to some of the marines. Who, he had told her, all seemed like good soldiers, and even though he wasn't too used to talking with people in a friendly way, all seemed to accept him into their groups.

He carried her holopad into the armoury, where his MJOLNIR armour had been cleaned and fixed by a private who had lost a bet to the his Lieutenant.

'I'll pick up an assault riffle on my way out too,' John told the armouries assistant.

'Yes sir. Although the Captain said that none of the soldiers need any weapons on this mission.'

'I like to carry one anyway, just to be on the safe side,' John said as he walked over to where the weapons were stored, even they looked dusty on this ship. He grabbed an MA5B Assault Rifle off the rack and some clips out of the ammo box on the floor. He attached a couple of grenades to his belt, just in case. The assistant laughed a little as he walked out of the armoury, leaving John and Cortana alone.

'Does anyone on board this ship have any respect?' Cortana asked.

'I really don't think so, they are all very relaxed. I think the year we were out we might have missed something. The marines were saying the covenant are backing off a little. And that some soldiers were starting to be send to their home planets,' John paused while fiddling with his uniform. 'Come on, I'll take you to the Captain.'

'Thank you.'

They got to the bridge very quickly, to find the door wedged open with a 6D Pistol at which Cortana tutted and shook her head.

'Come on in soldier!' John recognised the captains voice.

'Sir,' John saluted.

'At ease,' muttered the Captain, sitting on the side of his desk.

'Cortana has a few questions for you about today's mission, if you have time Sir?'

'Suppose. Shoot.'

'Why are you looking for the Quorniks? And looking to help them?'

'Well the honest answer is that that's what my orders were,' he said, giving Cortana a little wink. Seeing she was very unimpressed by this he continued, 'We are looking for surviving Quorniks because their help is required in some technical problems. Too advanced for many humans, and currently there are no A I's on Earth smart enough to help.'

'What technical problems?' Cortana asked.

'I dunno,' replied Captain Mason. 'But we're sending pelicans out on a moment or two, so if I were you,' he was looking at the Master Chief 'I'd get her tucked away in your head and get into place for landing.'

John said that he would and saluted. He left the room still holding Cortana's holopad.

'I don't like him,' she said.

'I didn't think you would,' chuckled John.

-*-*-*-*-


	3. Chapter 3

A/N Blimey its been a few weeks since my last update, and a busy few weeks at that! Hopefully I'll be able to get the next couple of chapters up really quick though. Thank you all for the reviews as well, they really made me smile. More reviews make me smile more!

Chapter 3 – Chief, I'm Picking Up Movement.

The planet was mainly water, with just 16 small islands. The islands were divided between the 5 search parties on board the Unicorn. Master Chief had seen two teams off the ship before it was he and his teams turn. They landed the ship on a large derelict field, well it could have been a derelict field. Everything looked derelict.

The small team made their way to either the warthog or the M831 troop transport, that had been provided for their mission. John took the drivers seat in the warthog, he had a marine and a gunner in with him, the other vehicle had 3 passengers and a driver. They set off to the east, planning on driving around the coast of the island, then through the middle a few times, being a mostly flat and small island, it was expected to only take a day, 2 at the most.

They found no-one on the first island, and John heard over his HUD's communication system that none of the teams had found any survivors, although one team had found a large pile of dead Quornik bodies rotting on a large island to the north of the planet.

By the third day John's team were halfway around their second island. This one was smaller than the last, but looked like people had once lived here. It had small towns and cities, and what once could have been nice houses, but were now mainly piles of rubble. In the forth small town the team had searched, they split up. John on his own, and the others in two teams. He'd been searching for an hour before he heard Cortana's voice.

'Chief? Detecting life forms up ahead,' she lit up the motion sensor on John's HUD, 9 red dots flashed.

'Thought the covenant had left this planet?'

'They have. These may be civilians, so they aren't fitted with the IFF tags,' she paused. '25 meters away.'

He prepared himself mentally for what he might meet, not really knowing much about the Quorniks, he had his rifle ready and closed in the gap between his own blinking yellow dot on the HUD and the multiple red dots.

-*-*-*-*-

The first Quornik he saw was a rather small female. Not too dissimilar to humans looks wise, although her facial features looked too small and close together to fit her head. The Quornik, a child John guessed, screamed and ran into what looked like a rabbit hole, dug into the side of a hill of rubble when she saw John, who, to the girl, must have looked terrifying due to his height more than anything else.

'Captain Mason this is Cortana,' John heard Cortana call over the radio.

'Captain Mason here, go ahead Cortana.'

'The Master Chief has come across a number of surviving Quorniks,' she paused again, as if waiting for the captain to reply and John realised that they hadn't been told what to do on finding the Quorniks. He didn't know if he was suppose to approach them, wait for back up, capture them and hold them hostage, or just ask for their help. 'Permission to approach?'

'Whatever,' came the reply over the radio and Cortana sighed.

'Well, we could alwa....'

'You! You there! What are you?' a loud, gruff voice came from the pile of rubble the small girl had ran into. John spotted the unmistakeable barrel of a covenant particle beam rifle and ducked a little, he had been shot at a fair few times by the sniper jackals that usually carried this type of weapon, and it really was one of his least favourite guns to be shot by. Not that he had a favourite to be shot by, of course.

'Hold... hold your fire!' he called, not really used to this type of situation, he muttered quietly to Cortana, 'what do I say now?'

'Answer his question and explain about the ship and mission.'

'I...My name is John, I'm a Spartan...working aboard the Unicorn for the UNSC. We... I mean the ship has been sent to request your help regarding...' John paused, he didn't know what it was regarding really. 'Well we're not here to hurt you, so please, lower your weapon.'

He saw the weapon being dragged back into the hole and a face peer out. Slowly, very slowly a slightly larger Quornik crawled out. Male this time, as the voice suggested, with a large belly and a long beard.

'Our help? Its not for anymore wars is it? We wont be involved in any fighting, oh no. Not us. Not the Quorniks. Peace loving, gentle beings we be.'

Possibly crazy too, thought John as he heard his radio crackle, he held up his hand to silence the Quornik, who judging by his facial expression, took a little offence.

'This is Captain Mason to Master Chief, come in Master Chief,' his voice heavy with sarcasm. He continued after Cortana informed him that they were receiving him. 'We have received the coordinates of your location, and will be there in 5 minutes. Keep 'em talking, wont you?'

John agreed that he would, and turned back to the Quornik.

'We aren't here to ask you to fight,' he told it, remembering what the Quornik had been saying. 'Looks like there's been enough of that going on around here.'

'Yes, yes. A fair bit. On their side, the covenant that is. We didn't fight, we never fight.'

'What's with the gun then?' Asked John.

'Well...' Started the Quornik, shuffling his feet a little. ' One of the covenant dropped it, after they were done glassing the town. I wasn't going to use it, ever.'

'What's your name?'

'Bud.'

'Well, nice to meet you Bud,' John said as he stepped forward cautiously holding out his right hand.

Bud shook it, and proceeded to inform John how terrible the Covenant had been, and how much he really disliked them after they had glassed the whole planet. John thought that 'really disliking' the Covenant was a _bit _weak, considering they had wiped out most of their population, but he wasn't going to tell the crazy Quornik how to feel any time soon, and plus listening to him made the 5 minutes until Captain Mason turned up pass quickly.


	4. Chapter 4

AN- So sorry for not updating in ages, but I moved from a house into a caravan (seemed like a good idea at the time, but now its cold) and I also got Halo 3 ODST, Gears of war, and Call of duty, all in quick succession. Anyone addicted to computer games enough to read halo fanfic will understand. That said, here's chapter four...

Chapter 4 – If I Had Fingers, They'd Be Crossed...

Captain Mason had arrived and convinced Bud, and 3 other Quorniks to board the ship via the pelicans. It turned out that these 9 Quorniks were the only ones left from their entire race, and as these particular Quorniks sucked at anything other then their unique way with technical problems, they were fast running out of food. As a result, were quite willing to listen to what Captain Mason had to say.

'So welcome aboard,' he started, 'we have been sent to see if you guys wanna work on a bunch of ships badly damaged in the war what need fixin' so they can help beat the crap outta the Covenant. I think, pretty much all you guys need to do is wiggle a few wires here and there to get the damn things on the go again. In return you're gonna be looked after by us a bit. You in?'

'I think what Captain Mason is asking,' Cortana spoke from her holopad, 'is, would you be willing to help repair a fleet of damaged ships, so the can be used in defeating the Covenant? In return you receive protection.'

'That's what I said.'

The Quorniks said they'd like to consider their options a few moments, and stepped into a corner of the dank room. John figured that nether he nor they were probably being told the whole story. Why would the UNSC need another race to fix their ships? Surely, there were enough trained electricians in the human race? None the less he kept his mouth shut, deciding that Captain Mason either wouldn't tell him or didn't actually know the full story himself, either through not being told as he was probably considered a liability or he just didn't bother to listen when he _was_ told.

The Quorniks returned with their answer, and unsurprisingly had decided that the Captains offer was good enough to accept. As long as they were given somewhere to live and help in getting settled.

'Alright. We'll set off then, shall we?' Mason asked pushing himself up from the desk he had perched on and clapping his hands. 'You guys planning on buildin' up your race again? 'Cuz if you are I want you to seriously consider how inbreedy it'll all be. Ya know, with only 9 of you lest' He said the last bit with a merry wink as he wandered off to do something probably very unimportant in another office at the front of the ship.

Once the remaining Quorniks had been boarded the Unicorn they headed off, John wasn't sure if the plan was still that he and Cortana would be taken to the Spike 187 and taken back to Earth, or they would remain with Captain Mason, his odd crew and 9 Quorniks. Part of him wanted to find out more about this mission, but he also wanted to find out what had been going on elsewhere, none of the crew here were much help giving him answers.

Corporal Kelly Mathews had been called upon again to settle the Quorniks in, John wondered if she resented being used as the ships butler as he made his way back to his room. He dismissed the thought as he set Cortana's holopad down on the desk and sat on the bed, after spending days looking for the Quorniks, he was tired.

'Chief?' Cortana snapped him out of his sleepy daze with a very small voice. He half raised his head, showing he was listening, 'I think the Quorniks can help me.'

'In what way? Why do you need help?'

'My... My lifespan is almost up, I'm going to shut down soon.'

It took a few seconds for John to process the words. He'd always known AI's don't live forever, he'd always known Cortana was an AI, but for some reason hadn't connected the two. Or didn't want to connect the two. He'd become used to having her around, usually in his head. He'd let her become a friend, forgetting she was a computer generated friend and had never thought about her not being there during battles with the covenant or at moment like these, when it was just the two of them.

'I... When will you shut down?' John swallowed hard as he said the words, he felt like he'd just been told his legs were due to be cut off.

'In a week or so a date will be projected into my data system, that will be my DoD.'

John knew DoD to mean Date of Death. 'How can the Quorniks help?'

'They may be able to extend my life, they have an advantage in technology that surpasses even mine,' Cortana admitted.

John got up quickly and swiped the holopad off the desk and headed to the door.

'John!' Cortana's voice was so stern he stopped straight away. 'Where are we going?'

'To speak with the Quorniks, if they can't help then we need to know ASAP so we can find someone else. Someone that can help.'

'Not tonight, John. I'll still be here in the morning, we can ask them then. They need sleep, and so do you.'

John reluctantly and wordlessly returned the holopad to the desk and sank back to his bed.

_*_*_*_*_

When he awoke in the morning, John felt more tired than he had been before sleeping, he spent the night tossing and turning, knowing that in this circumstance he was so useless it was almost laughable. His best and only friend was dyeing and he was as good as powerless to stop it, having to rely on the help of a race of human-alien hybrids. If of course they were able and willing to help. He wasn't too worried about the willing part, he'd make them, but he couldn't punch them until they were able to help, couldn't punch them clever.

He jumped out of bed quickly when he opened his eyes and realised that Cortana wasn't on her holopad, until his brain woke up enough to realise that she had probably wondered into the ship computer system for a little snooping. She probably hadn't expected him up so early, he figured, as it wasn't even 5am yet he realised as he looked at his watch. He bowed his head, holding it in his hands, God he needed to shave, but it could wait, everything could wait until he was sure Cortana was safe he thought as he drifted back to sleep, while still sitting up.

_*_*_*_*_

Cortana hadn't gone snooping, she had seen John stirring and disappeared into cyberspace. During the night, while watching John in his restlessness, she had had a data stream entry. Her DoD had come though.


End file.
